€20 a year to join
Quango employees given a top-class gym plus laptops, iPads and foreign travel
STAFF at Irish Water’s headquarters in Dublin are charged just €20 a year for access to its top-ofthe-range gym.
There was widespread anger among taxpayers when it first emerged that the water company was building a gym in its office at Colvill House on Talbot Street.
Now a Freedom of Information request by the Irish Mail on Sunday has revealed that Irish Water spent €38,000 on top quality exercise equipment for its staff.
The FoI also revealed that the company had spent €344,849 on tablets (enough to buy almost 1,000 basic iPads), €418,319 on laptops and PCs, and €87,556 on mobile phones.
The company has sent staff on 10 business trips over the past nine months, with an average cost of about €3,000 per trip. The most expensive trip was in November, when four employees attended the International Water Association
‘They’re not conscious of public opinion’
Conference in Amsterdam at a cost of €4,519.
The 329 Irish Water staff and 17 Bord Gáis employees who work in the building will have access to the gym. Most gyms in Dublin city centre charge at least €50 per month – or €600 annually – in membership fees.
John McGuinness, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, described the amount spent on the gym as disappointing.
He said: ‘Irish Water don’t seem to have learned from the public debate and the expression of public disquiet about how they spent its money on consultants.
‘They seemed to have ignored that and just continued on, judging by the spending of that kind of money on a gym, and they are not directly accountable by legislation to the Public Accounts Committee.
‘That type of expenditure, following the public debate that we have had up until now, shows clearly that they’re not conscious of public opinion and they’re not conscious of value for money. There is a need for the legislation to be changed to ensure they are brought under the remit of the Public Accounts Committee.’
The gym is fitted out with top-ofthe-range equipment.
The exercise room features two Technogym Run Now 700 machines – which cost €7,920 each.
It boasts two Technogym Synchro Excite 700 cross trainers at a cost of €6,125 each, a Technogym Bike Excite 800 at a cost of €2,848, a Concept II Rower for €1,537 and a Vectra Multi Gym, which cost €9,840.
The exercise room also features a range of other equipment; the total cost came to €38,000. Irish Water did not respond to questions about additional costs such as insurance or staff. It also did not respond to questions about whether it will ever recoup the total investment through these membership fees.
Irish Water declined ‘for commercial reasons’ to give a breakdown of spending on items such as laptops and mobile phones.
A spokesman said Irish Water
received a ‘significant discount’ and disclosing more information could result in a financial loss to the supplier or could ‘prejudice its competitive position’.
When it was pointed out that the amount spent on tablets was enough to buy a top-of-the-range iPad for every staff member, a spokeswoman denied this was the case. She said tab- lets were used to ‘monitor progress across the metering programme’ and to ‘facilitate site inspections’.
Irish Water has spent €46,686 on stationery and €13,481 on printer paper. Documents also show that Irish Water has spent a further €46,535 on teambuilding exercises, management courses and business trips since July.